


Omnia Vincit Amor

by kittydesade



Category: Haven - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-07
Updated: 2012-12-07
Packaged: 2017-11-20 13:41:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/585971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittydesade/pseuds/kittydesade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the end of the last cycle and the beginning of the next, Nathan and Duke hope they won't ever have to go through this again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Omnia Vincit Amor

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tzigane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tzigane/gifts).



> Well, it was valid at the time it was written! Originally penned before the last two episodes of season three, so it has been thoroughly busted. Ah well.

"Well. This certainly is a familiar place."

The last time they'd been here neither of them had a clue what was going on. This time, Duke knew why Nathan was pointing a gun at him in the mess hall of his boat. Not for certain, and he didn't want to believe it, and Nathan probably didn't either, but if he were to be cold and honest with himself (which he didn't want to do either) Duke knew what had happened. 

"What did you do to her." Nathan's voice was quiet, always quiet, Nathan was a quiet guy. But the fact that he was cool and calm was a sign that he knew what had happened, too, and this was desperation more than anything else. That meant that maybe Duke could talk him down. Or at least get the gun away from him. 

Duke kept his hands up where Nathan could see them. "I didn't do anything, Nathan, you knew this could happen. We all did." He swallowed, took a step back. It hurt more than he'd expected to admit that. "We all knew someday she might make that choice." 

Nathan took a step forward, kept the gun on Duke but at least it didn't look like he intended to shoot him, and his finger was off the trigger. "No. No, she was going to beat it. She'd found a way..." He didn't seem to know how to say it, what the right words were. If she'd beaten it, if she'd gotten over it, through the critical point. Duke guessed that was because she obviously hadn't, and she'd been telling Nathan what he needed to hear to keep going. Or Nathan had heard what he wanted to hear. Duke had never heard Audrey say anything about knowing how to fix Haven another way. 

"I thought she had too, man, okay?" Now he took a step forward, into the gun, even if he kept waiting for Nathan's finger to twitch. So, not so much like last time. "I thought she had too, I don't know, maybe she'll come back. But you knew this could happen. Doesn't make it any better, I know..." He was within grabbing range. Anyone else, Duke would have grabbed the gun and put the guy in a headlock. Instead he found himself putting a hand on the back of Nathan's wrist and forcing his hand down. "Believe me. I know."

Nathan looked even worse for that. His eyes fogged up, confused, distant. He had a couple days' worth of stubble on his face, the bones of his wrist jutting up through his skin enough for Duke to feel it. Neither of them were exactly rolling in body mass, but Nathan was taking the whole man-made-of-sticks thing to extremes lately. And right then, Duke hated Audrey a little bit for leaving Nathan like this. It went away as soon as he saw Nathan's eyes fixing on him and remembered the look in Audrey's when she told him to take care of Nathan if she couldn't. _Please, Duke. You're the only other one who can. You're the only one who knows him._

And when the hell had he become the middleman in their little drama, anyway?

"She was supposed to stay this time..." 

Oh. Right.

Duke sighed and took the gun from him. Maybe taking care of Nathan right here and now would help him forget that Audrey wasn't going to show up and take the idiot off his hands. "Yeah, well, she didn't." 

By the time Duke put the gun in the one cabinet that locked, stuck the key on the chain around his neck, exchanged the gun for a good bottle of whiskey, Nathan realized Duke had taken his gun. "Hey, you..."

"... are saving your dumb ass from making an incredibly stupid decision," Duke pointed the bottle at him, grabbed a couple of glasses. "Sit. Drink. And we'll figure out what happened. Maybe we can ..." He didn't know what to finish that sentence with. If there was anything to say that wouldn't skewer them both in the soft bits. His fingers danced on the edges of the glasses for a second before he set them down on the table, fell into the bench opposite where Nathan was standing. "Sit. Before you fall over and I have to drag you off my boat." 

Nathan half glared at him and half rolled his eyes, which was the closest thing they'd gotten to normal since he'd stormed onto the Cape Rouge in the first place. He sat down, Duke poured them both a triple, and they slammed back most of it at once, together. And coughed. 

And then they waited. Duke didn't know what Nathan was waiting for; he was waiting for the alcohol to kick in. Warm and fuzzy around the edges, and the fuzzy part came soon enough even if the warmth escaped him. Swirling the glass slowly with one hand, he stopped and set it down as Nathan moved to top them both up again.

"What happened?" he asked. 

Nathan jerked back, then finished pouring. Set the bottle down slow and careful. "She called, said she was coming in late. Didn't say why, just. Car trouble. Then she called, asked me to meet her on the island. I got there. She was gone."

Duke rolled the glass against his forehead as he tried to remember where he'd been that morning when she called him. Delivery day. "And I was..." Delivery day, he should have been at the Gull. "I was at the docks. Checking on this week's menu for the Gull. She needed a ride out to Kick'Em Jenny Neck. I walked her up there, then she said she'd be back soon. Then," he shook his head. "Complete blank. I should have gone with her." That was the part he was still kicking himself over. He should have been with Audrey when this went down. And he hadn't been. He'd lagged behind, let her go on alone. 

They both took a drink. A big one. Which was why Duke put it down to the booze when he thought he heard Nathan mumble, "You couldn't have known."

"I knew. You knew. We all knew, and we ..." No, he couldn't call them all idiots for thinking it was over, not when Nathan was this much of a wreck. Besides, Nathan might try and point another gun at him. "We had a few extra days."

That, somehow, more than anything else that had happened in the last hour or so, that hit Duke hard. Saying that made the separation between Audrey time and no-Audrey time real. He dropped his head over his glass and drummed his fingers on the table once, before his hands clenched and his knuckles pressed against the hardwood. It hurt. His chest hurt, his throat felt swollen and sticky, his eyes and face felt hot. A few extra days, and what had they done with them? Bitched at each other. Made jokes. Same as they always did. 

"Duke." 

"What." 

"She'll be back."

He lifted his head, which felt like too much of an effort to be worth it, and glared at Nathan for saying that. "Sure, she'll be back." Heaving the words out, too. "With a whole new set of memories, a whole new person, she won't remember you or me or Haven or any of this..."

"So, we'll tell her." 

How the hell was Nathan suddenly the one taking this so calmly. "We'll... oh, right, of course. Because that goes over so well. Hey, look, I know you don't know me from a hole in the ground, but we used to be really good friends back when you were Audrey Parker, and ...." And nothing. It had taken them months to come to the point where they had been. Whatever they were. She knew, and he knew she knew, but he hadn't managed to figure out the right way to say something without seeming like he was asking for more than she was willing to give. And then she was gone. And Duke swallowed back all of that because he didn't feel like opening up to Nathan fucking Wuornos today. Not about Audrey.

"Yeah. We'll tell her. Maybe not right away, but she'll come around. And we'll tell her. We won't do what my Dad did, what..." 

Duke grimaced. "I really hate those two."

"You're not the only one." The corners of Nathan's eyes crinkled, just for a moment, he'd swear he wasn't imagining it. "So, when she comes around asking. We'll tell her. Everything she wants to know, about who she was."

More booze. The answer to this was definitely more booze, until it stopped hurting. At least for right now. "Yeah. We'll tell her. And then what?"

Nathan's head dropped, shoulders slumped, the wind let out of him like a balloon. "And then... I don't know. We'll figure something out." He didn't sound convinced. Neither was Duke. 

"Yeah. We'll figure something out." He looked out of one of the portholes because it was better than seeing that same gut-churning loss on Nathan's face and reminding himself that he hadn't been able to fight it, that one more thing had been taken by this goddamned town. Simon had made him promise to come back if the Troubles did, too. Well, fuck Simon Crocker. And now that Duke had some idea _why_ his Dad made him promise to come back, fuck him twice over. There wasn't anything for him here anymore. As soon as he made other plans, dealt with the Gull, he'd be gone.

He looked back over towards Nathan to tell him that, but Nathan had dropped his head into the palm of his hand, other hand clenched tight around the glass. And though he was doing a decent job of hiding his face, he couldn't hide the twitch of his shoulders or the soft, intermittent drops onto the table top. 

Hell. Duke could leave Haven and the Gull and the Troubles, all of it, but no matter what Nathan thought of him, he couldn't leave his friend like this.

He had enough sense to call Laverne, let her and the station know Nathan was okay and might be late to work tomorrow, before pouring them both into bed. Well, pouring Nathan onto one of the spare bunks that doubled most of the time as a couch, then passing out face-first onto his own bed, shoes and all. At some point he woke up when the heat from his bedside light was cooking his elbow, managed to stagger to the bathroom and take a piss before leaving a trail of dirty clothes behind him and falling back into bed again. When he woke up, Nathan was gone. 

"And so it goes," Duke murmured, looking around at his empty stateroom. "Dammit, Audrey..."

  


  


  


Every time he passed the steps up to her apartment he thought, with some guilt, about how he should go clear her stuff out. Pack it up, maybe in case she came back. Mostly because it wouldn't do anyone any good just sitting there like some dust-collecting monument, some stalker shrine to a woman who wasn't in the world anymore. Not as far as he could tell. He waited, like a coward, until Nathan was at the Gull on police business to broach the subject.

"Just call me if you see him," Nathan sighed, back to his exasperated, exhausting self. At least on the surface. Duke thought he was a little more snappish than usual. 

"Yeah, well. And, on another subject..." Nathan turned, almost rolling his eyes. "What do you want to do about Audrey's stuff?"

The abrupt cone of silence around them was only his imagination, Duke was pretty sure. No reason everyone should be paying attention to them right now. "Um," Nathan replied. Duke gave him a second to figure out the rest of that, during which he wondered if Nathan hadn't cleaned her stuff out of the office, either. 

"I mean, we don't have to decide anything now," he started, before he realized he'd just lumped himself in with Nathan on the Audrey Clean-Up Crew. Then he thought he should shut up until the awkward realizations came _before_ he said anything instead of after, with no chance to take it back. Which took a couple of breaths. "I just thought you might have some ideas." 

"Ah, no. No, no ideas." Nathan pulled himself out of it, put da Chief back on and the mask looked so out of place on him that Duke couldn't decide if he wanted to hug Nathan or punch him. 

"You're a lot like your Dad, you know that?" Duke told him. "Let me know when you figure something out." And then he had to go do that thing over there with the guy. It was his place of business, there had to be some thing with some guy.

The irony of it, he decided, after another couple of hours and a couple of shots, the irony of it was that Nathan being like his Dad wasn't a bad thing, though he could guess that Nathan would take it that way. Sure, Nate and the Chief had had their arguments, a lot of them, but when it came down to it Nathan had had the father who gave more than half a damn about him. Between the two of them, among their three fathers, you couldn't say that about either of the other two. Simon Crocker hadn't given a damn about Duke or his son might grow up to be, and from what little Duke had seen of Max Hansen he figured Nathan was better off.

"Here's to you, you old bastard," Duke raised his glass to a hazy memory of his chain-smoking obsessed father. "Rest in hell."

"The skinwalker?"

Duke looked up. He hadn't expected Nathan to still be here. Again be here. Whichever, he wasn't keeping tabs on Nathan. "My Dad," he shrugged. 

Nathan gave him some eyebrows. "What brought that on?" 

"Nothing. Never mind." He pushed the bottle over Nathan's way. "Care to join us?" 

More eyebrows, but he did sit down, and even caught the bottle and poured a generous fifth. "Us?"

"Me and the Captain were reminiscing and thinking that, well. Maybe the next generation of Crockers and ... whatever other Havenites can be a little smarter than the one before." His expansive gesture with his glass didn't slop anything over the sides, but it did remind him that he'd drunk enough for his coordination to be off and maybe he should keep sitting down if he was going to be dramatic.

Unlike the last couple of times they'd sat down together, Nathan didn't drink at first. Maybe he was getting better. Duke wasn't, and if Nathan was he might have to get a little upset with him for that. Later. When he was sober again. "What brought this on?" he asked finally.

Duke shrugged. What hadn't brought this on, lately? Audrey's disappearance, Jordan still acting as though he wanted to kill her when she thought he wasn't looking. Even though she knew, she _knew_ that wouldn't do a damn thing, with everyone's Troubles gone. Dwight having to vouch for him to almost everyone, and it wasn't like he and Dwight were best buddies, either. Everyone treated Duke like the playboy bar owner, which he admittedly sort of was, or like the heir to his father's legacy of killing people to make things better, which was a cure to which he damn well did not subscribe. It was getting old. The first part had been fun for a little while but now was getting old. The second part had been old about five minutes after he'd discovered it existed.

"How's things with Jordan and the Guard going?" he asked, looking back over at Nathan finally. Nathan didn't buy the change of subject, but he didn't argue, either.

"They're all right. As much as they get," he added, sitting up straighter and giving Duke more of a wry look. Even a little sympathy in there. "Everyone's adjusting. The hardcore members are rebuilding. The fringe ones are getting their lives back."

Duke's opinion of Jordan's people hadn't improved much, considering most of them still wanted to kill him. The idea of die-hard Guard people who still thought he was the enemy battening down hatches for something didn't reassure him. "Oh goody."

"You asked." 

He rubbed his forehead, not that it would do anything for the headache. "Yeah, I know. What about the others? The Rev's people." 

"Confused. Scared," Nathan shrugged. "They think it's coming back. They just don't know when."

"Yeah, well. By the time it comes back around, they'll have forgotten about it. It'll just be nightmares, scary stories they tell to their kids. Urban legends." 

"That'd be bad." 

Duke stared at Nathan, trying to decide if he was being ironic or not. "You've got quite a gift for understatement there," he leaned back again. Then the penny dropped. "You sound like you've got something in mind to deal with that." 

Nathan nodded. "We form our own Guard." His voice had an upward lilt at the end, though it didn't seem like Nathan was asking Duke if that was a good plan. Which was good, because Duke thought it was a shitty plan, and waited for Nathan to cough up the punchline.

There was no punchline. "You're serious."

"Whatever the Guard started out as, we can't trust them now. The Rev's people are going to be all over this next time, there'll just be someone else leading the frenzy. Everyone else will be caught in the middle. I'm not talking about..." he interrupted, because Duke was having a fit of incredulity. "I'm not talking about recruiting. I mean a home guard, you, me, whoever else we can trust."

Duke fed him a flat, unhappy stare. "You mean you."

"I mean you and me." 

"And anyone else we can trust."

Nathan nodded. "Yeah."

Duke grimaced, rubbing a hand along the back of his neck and trying not to feel the target between his shoulder-blades. Whatever bit of startled warmth he felt from Nathan saying he trusted him was smothered by the icy reality that there wasn't anyone else _he_ trusted. "Dwight, too, I guess. I mean, Sasquatch has been pretty useful." And by what he knew about Dwight, the big guy wasn't likely to trust anyone either. So that made three very paranoid people trying to work together.

It still didn't sound like a good plan. Or a plan at all.

"That mean you're in?"

He swallowed back all the reasons this was a bad idea. Just the two of them, for starters, maybe just the three of them if Dwight joined in this crazy adventure. "What about Vince and Dave?"

"I don't trust them, Audrey didn't trust them..."

Heh. "Well, _I_ don't trust them. Doesn't mean we couldn't use their help. They know just about everything thing about Haven, or, you know. Everything anyone alive knows about Haven." Duke grimaced. "Too bad no one has a resurrection power. We could resurrect the founding fathers and shake them till their heads popped off."

Nathan almost smiled. "Wouldn't get much from them that way."

Duke found he was smiling back. Damn. "You sure you want to do this with me, though? I mean, you and I aren't exactly..."

"Audrey trusted you. Far as I know, she trusted you with everything." Nathan looked down at the table, fiddled with nothing in his fingers. "Audrey would have wanted us working together. And you were pretty much the only other friend she had in Haven."

He didn't know how to take that. Audrey had had friends, she'd had a lot of friends, but somehow he didn't think that was what Nathan meant. And he couldn't wrap his mind around what Nathan really meant, right now. It was too big and still too raw. He swallowed around a dry and sticky throat, and nodded, because it was what Audrey would have wanted. And, truthfully, in a place he thought he'd given up a long time ago, it was what Duke wanted, too.

"Okay, then. We'll ... we'll do that."

  


  


  


The new plan ran into a few speedbumps within two weeks. 

Nathan knew it was stupid and childish to go storming out of the Gull like that, and he did it anyway. No one who saw him would be surprised. Or ask questions.

Duke just got on his last nerve, now, for some reason. Which was embarrassing and stupid because Nathan had asked for his help in the first place. But everything got on his nerves these days, he'd gotten in a fight with Jordan the other day over how the Guard was quietly filtering their members back out of Haven and over the country. They'd patched things up afterwards, but every fight knocked down what was left of their friendship even further. Without Audrey to hold him and Duke together, he wondered if their friendship would end up like him and Jordan. 

Audrey was the reason he'd gone to see Duke in the first place, anyway. He could all but hear her voice. _Nathan_. Exasperated, but gentle and fond despite that. _Nathan. He's your friend. He's helping me. Give him a chance._

"I'm giving him a chance, Parker," Nathan whispered to thin air. "I'm giving him as much of a chance as I can..." 

What the hell was he doing. Talking to thin air. Audrey wasn't there, she was gone, wherever it was she went between the Troubles. Back to the barn. Nathan clenched his jaw and his fists as his throat swelled up, closed his eyes until the thought went away. Deep, long breaths. 

When he opened his eyes again it was because someone was coming up behind him, footsteps crunching on gravel. He knew that pace, even, if he allowed himself to think it. Duke's saunter, meandering, the side-to-side sway of his shoulders that was almost a swagger but that lacked the force or aggression. Duke sauntered up alongside him and stopped, hands in his pockets. 

"Thinking of her?"

Maybe Audrey wouldn't hold it against him, when she came back, if he punched Duke a few times? By then it would be a long time ago. "What do you want," he ground out, turning.

Duke paused with the dishtowel still wrapped around one hand. "Came to say I'm sorry. You're right. I was wrong."

All the things Nathan wanted to say to that were more in line with the old Duke-and-Nathan repertoire of banter. Which amounted to insulting each other till they fought, again. "It's okay. It's..." No, Nathan, shut up while you're ahead. "I'm sorry, too."

Duke rocked back on one heel, half-smiling. "Whoa. Who are you and what have you done with Chief Wuornos?" The relief of Duke being Duke was enough to get Nathan smiling. A bit. 

"Shut up."

Duke laughed. Then stuck the dishcloth in his pocket and got serious, catching Nathan off-guard. "Seriously, though, we need to come up with a better reason why we're hanging around together. I mean, it's pretty well known that we don't like each other that much."

"Here I thought we were better," Nathan quipped, though he knew what Duke meant. "You could always hang up your smuggler's, uh. Pirate hat." 

"... I'm just gonna go ahead and assume you're kidding on that one."

No, but he hadn't thought Duke would bite, either. "You let me worry about what people are going to think for now. I'll call you in on a couple of cases, keep you updated." He lifted his head over Duke's shoulder at the Gull. "Owning a bar's a pretty good excuse to know a lot of people. You could have information that could help."

Duke shrugged, equal parts hope and cynicism. "Fair enough. What happens when that excuse wears thin?"

"I'll come up with another one." Nathan glanced around the parking lot as though a convenient excuse was lurking behind a wheel well somewhere. No one was more surprised when he did find an excuse, and it was lurking behind a wheel well. An excuse in the form of a pair of dirt-rimmed eyes and black hair that hadn't been washed in a few days. "Are you collecting them now?"

"Pokemon?" Duke blinked. "Yu-gi-oh." 

"Stray kids," he pointed. The eyes and hair, seeing that they'd been spotted, ducked back down again. Duke had to squint to find the kid's shadow, then nodded and gestured for Nathan to back up. Which he did. He had no illusions about street kids wanting to be approached by cops.

"You know, it's a lot warmer inside," Duke called, approaching with a calm, easy stride. "I'm just saying. Won't even make you buy anything."

Nathan took a few steps back so he was in the shadows, just keeping an eye out. Duke was better at this stuff than he was, once they were teenagers. And it was Duke's place, so it was his show. But he'd stick around and keep an eye out, just in case. You never knew. Duke might need a little help.

  


  


  


Days slipped by, stretched out into months. Years. Nathan kept dropping by the Gray Gull, sometimes pretending to make trouble for Duke, other times just for a quiet drink. People got used to seeing him around, and though he still tried to come up with an excuse why he was friends with Duke all of a sudden, it didn't' seem like anyone cared anymore. 

Audrey's stuff stayed in the apartment upstairs, Duke hadn't cleaned it out yet. He kept asking Nathan if he wanted to do something about it, but they never did. 

The regulars cycled in and out, people got used to seeing Haven's chief of police cozy with the Gull's proprietor. After closing, they found they were making a habit of staying in and having drinks, till one night Duke suggested they go out up to the porch outside Audrey's apartment and have drinks under the stars. 

"Did you just ask me out on a date?" Nathan blinked at him.

"... No."

"Because that sure sounded like you asking someone out on a date."

"I wasn't..."

"I mean, I've heard you try to ask women out on dates before. Not very well. And that's kind of what it sounded like."

"Shut up."

Nathan didn't stop laughing at him till they were up on the porch. And drinks under the stars became a warm weather tradition. Along with jokes about the upcoming nuptials, Duke rescuing stray kids from the Gull, the police station, or anywhere in between. Nathan's pet smuggler, at the station, though no one Duke worked with on the shadier side of things dared say two words about Duke's pet police officer. Nathan waited for years for Duke to pull something like he had that first time, when the Troubles came back. 

"You could come around once in a while, you know." They were both pretty drunk, Nathan had the next couple of days off and for whatever reason, he didn't want to go home. They'd caught the tail end of a serial killer case from Boston, a little too close to what happened the last time they'd had a serial killer up from Boston. This time, the Boston detective didn't stick around, though.

Nathan leaned back further in his chair, drumming his fingers on the tabletop. "I start hanging around your boat, people will talk."

"Oh, people are already talking. You should hear what they're saying, too." Duke gave him the eyebrows over the rim of his glass, hiding some kind of expression behind the rum. 

He hadn't, actually, heard what people are saying. "This is more of the kind of thing I don't want to know about, isn't it." 

"That depends." Then a long pause until Nathan got fed up with waiting and took another drink. "Do you like it on the top or bottom?" 

Turned out rum didn't go very well as a nasal spray. "Do I what? We what? Top or... what?" While he groped for a napkin to mop up his face and hand, he tried to imagine what the hell was going on in people's heads. Then he tried not to imagine it, because with that suggestion and a couple glasses of alcohol, imaginary!Nathan and imaginary!Duke were pretty hot. And there was no way in hell he'd thought that just now.

"I am not kidding. They think you spend the night here, after I close up, we go up and, um..." he cocked his head at the apartment.

Nathan's face flushed. He was more angry that they thought he and Duke were having sex in Audrey's bed than that they thought he and Duke were having sex. "You told them we're not, right?"

Duke gaped, then set the glass down after a long enough pause to make his point. "Okay, I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you don't know how this works. First, we deny it. Then they assume that means it's true. Then they keep on gossiping about us behind our backs, only now they've got what they think of as proof. Besides..." 

Crashing glass interrupted them both. Nathan's hand was on his holster and Duke's hand was under the table before the echo had faded. "I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume you got a permit for that," he whispered.

"You really want to have that discussion right now?"

One step, then another, Nathan knew all the creaky boards by now at least as well as Duke. No more crashing glass, either. The hard part was getting around all the glass doors and tall windows in the Gull's lower floor, mitigated somewhat by the three in the morning darkness. Nathan glanced at Duke, nodded. Duke unlocked and opened the door as silently as he could.

"Hold it, kid!" More crashing glass as the intruder dropped the tumbler _she'd_ been holding and whirled around. She was maybe fourteen. Probably twelve. The kid who ducked behind her had to be about six. 

Nathan and Duke put up their guns almost immediately. Glanced at each other. Over at the kids, the girl staring at them with white-rimmed eyes and the only thing visible of the little boy (assuming it was a boy) was his shoes. Nathan sighed, rolled his eyes at Duke and made his voice project fond exasperation. And steadiness. 

"What _is_ it with you, this place, and kids? You got a sign outside or something, free bed and meals?"

Duke picked it up smoothly where he'd set it down. "Hey, it's not my fault I got spare beds and a working heating system, okay?" He moved over towards the kitchen. "You guys hungry? Nathan, there, he doesn't know when he's had too much to drink, but he could probably use a burger to soak up those shots he's been slamming back."

"Hey."

But the girl giggled. Both men relaxed. 

"You want a burger?"

  


  


  


They both knew it was coming. The first signs came trickling in, strange cases, things that made Nathan tense up and down his back and in the arthritis in his hands. Duke pointed out that at least he could feel the arthritis in his hands, meant he was still unTroubled, right? Nathan claimed it didn't help, and wasn't he supposed to be fixing dinner, but it was some comfort. Along with the fact that Derrick and Kayla were grown up and out of Haven, now, whatever else happened to them, chances were pretty good their kids wouldn't suffer for it. Duke was up all night after Derrick left, clinging to Nathan and thinking aloud about his grandfather, and how keeping his family out of Haven hadn't helped Roy Crocker a damn bit. Nathan told him to stop worrying, no one was going to hurt their kids. The word 'adopted' had phased out of usage in their house. Boat. Thing.

The Guard hadn't started to mobilize, not that they were aware of, but neither of them suggested they'd gotten a jump on what Duke called "the creepy tattooed bastards." Dwight was keeping an eye on that, and he stomped around looking grumpy and concerned most of the time these days. But overall, they were pretty lucky so far. With Nathan around, with Duke having stayed the last twenty some odd years in Haven, people seemed to be getting more used to Duke Crocker being a person separate from the line of Crockers. 

And then Duke called him home to the Cape Rouge, late, after he'd already told Duke he was pulling an all-nighter. Nathan was used to getting disturbance calls around once a month to the Gray Gull, someone getting rowdy after a few too many drinks, angry at being refused service. Duke still didn't like having police on his boat, one specific chief excepted. The call had ended in Duke not even listening to Nathan, because he was telling someone else on the boat not to come any closer, not to even try it, whatever 'it' was. He'd called the emergency line, too, not Nathan's cell phone. Laverne passed it onto him, "It's your hubby," which for her was without comment.

"Duke?" Nathan took the first couple of steps down to the deck very slow, gun out, flashlight on crossways. The deck was lit up, but it only made the shadows in the doorway and the corners deeper. "Everything okay down there?"

The lack of any kind of an answer wasn't reassuring. He cleared the deck and the bridge before he went down to cabins. Duke sat in the stateroom, a body stretched out at his feet. Knife on the opposite side of the body from him.

"What happened..." There was enough blood everywhere that Nathan felt better keeping the gun on Duke, just until he could see the color of his eyes. "Duke?"

The fact that he couldn't see Duke's eyes very well through the sweat-matted fall of hair meant his eyes were probably brown, which meant either Duke's Trouble hadn't kicked in or whatever had happened was over now. Nathan crouched down, holstering his gun again and turning the flashlight off since there was at least some light around, looking over the body without touching anything.

"You wanna tell me what happened here?" 

Duke shook his head. It didn't look like a no, more like Duke couldn't believe what had happened any more than Nathan could. "He just... he came at me. With the knife. I tried to get it away from him, and..." His left hand flopped at the body. 

"And you killed him." Didn't need to take a pulse to see the guy was dead, the amount of blood all over Duke's floor told him that. 

"I didn't kill him, Nathan, I..." Duke dragged to his feet to get into the argument and froze, wide-eyed, when the toe of his sock touched the puddle of blood, soaking it instantly. They both froze. Waited for him to go white-eyed and violent. Waited some more. Duke breathed in, held it through half a cough, and exhaled loudly. "He came onto my boat, said he wanted to talk. So, okay, sure, we could talk. And then he said he'd heard what had happened the last time, what my Dad had done, and could I help him out. _Help him out,_ Nathan. Like killing him was helping him out."

Nathan scrubbed a hand over his face to buy time and because he couldn't believe what he was hearing. This crazy town and its Troubles just wouldn't stop. Wouldn't give anyone a break, wouldn't leave him and Duke alone, wouldn't quit with the weirdness. Driving people to commit suicide by making other people murder them. 

"Nathan, I swear, I didn't..."

"I know," he told him, picking his way through the mess as fast as he could without screwing up evidence or slipping in the blood. Over to Duke, pulling him into his arms. "No, I know, I just... give me a minute, here." 

Dammit. Duke buried his face in Nathan's shoulder and shivered, and Nathan tried to think. And there was nothing going for it, either, he'd have to report that he answered a disturbance call and found the guy struggling with Duke for the knife. Even if Lucassi could put the time of death before Nathan could have arrived at the Cape Rouge, he wouldn't say anything. Though if Lucassi could do that, Nathan would start looking at him very seriously for some kind of autopsy gremlin Trouble. 

"All right," one hand stayed rubbing Duke's back, the other put the gun and holster carefully on the table, pulled out his cell phone. "Here's what we're gonna do. I'm gonna call..." 

Duke's fingers dug in around his shoulder. "No, Nathan, you c--"

"Just calm down, okay? I'm going to call it in, they're going to collect the body. It was a clear-cut case of self-defense, you called me, I came over, I found you struggling with the guy, there wasn't anything either of us could do." And there wasn't time to explain any further because he had Laverne on the line. He stepped back, eased Duke back down to the bench and leaned against the wall. Thank god she hadn't retired yet. Sometimes Nathan thought she was under the impression that he was still a lanky fourteen years old. "Hey, Laverne? We're going to need the ambulance out by the docks. No, they don't need to run the lights, Duke had an intruder. Sit down," he added, pointing a finger at the other man. "We had an intruder. No, it's all over, now. Except the clean-up."

They had about five minutes to figure out what happened before other people came in and did it for them. Duke was still sat down by the time Nathan got off the phone, elbows on his knees and head in his hands. 

"Duke." Nathan crouched down in front of him, took his face in his hands. "Hey, Duke." Kissed him lightly. Then froze. No, that was something else, they could deal with that later. Right now he had to get his husband talking again. " _Duke._ "

"What. What, I'm here." Duke looked up, then focused his eyes on Nathan. Clear brown, still, thank god. "Why. Why is this even a, a thing?" By now Duke's gestures were dragging his hair out from his face, on the verge of sticking out at ends if Duke had shorter or less stringy hair. "Why do these people think I'm going to kill them to get rid of their Trouble?" 

He could think of so many things to say to that. So very many. "I don't know," was what came out instead, fingers combing through Duke's shaggy, half-greasy hair. "Maybe they don't see any other way out. Maybe their Troubles really are that bad." And when Duke gave him a half-hearted glare for that he shrugged. "Hey, you and me, we got lucky. Relatively." And he hoped Duke remembered that the next morning when he told him.

"Yeah, I guess." Duke dug his palms into his eyes. "I just have to avoid killing people, somehow."

"Somehow?" Nathan's eyebrows shot up, and while he tried to make light of it he didn't like the sound of that coming from Duke. "You're anticipating having problems not killing people?"

"If they keep throwing themselves at me, yeah! God, that sounded weird, even to me." More scrubbing his hands over his face, digging his fingers into his hair. Nathan caught his hands and dragged them down again, rubbing them to warm them up because shock made people chilled. "It's not like I advertise, okay? I guess it's not like they need to, they probably hear the name "Crocker" and think, oh, hey, I'll just go over and see that guy, he'll kill me, and my kids won't turn into blueberries, it'll be great..."

Nathan's first comment after he recovered his thoughts wasn't the best. "Willy Wonka?" 

"Shut up." 

Down in the Cape Rouge it was harder to hear the cars approaching, but they had to be on their way by now. If not pulling up to the docks. The ambulance crew would be down here soon, pulling the body out and taking it over to Lucassi, who would hopefully find that the wound was consistent with someone of ordinary strength. That Duke's Trouble hadn't kicked in until after the stabbing. He didn't want to have to ask about that if he didn't have to. Duke still had his shoulders bunched up around his ears, face gaunt and pale. He looked about as upset as Nathan had ever seen him, even more than after Harry Nix, or the gravedigger. 

"Hey. Why don't I get your statement now, I'll go back to the station with the b--" Don't say 'body.' "Ambulance, you can get some sleep and sign everything in the morning."

He looked up at Nathan, scrubbed a hand over his face and blinked a couple of times before he seemed to understand. "Right. Okay, yeah. Yeah... you coming home tonight?"

"Soon as I finish the paperwork. Which might mean tomorrow morning." Nathan smiled a little, kissed his forehead. "Don't wait up. And don't worry about it. I'll take care of it." The last thing he needed was someone hounding Duke. "You got Kayla's new phone number around here?"

"Uh..." Clarity came faster with bringing up their kids than anything, and Nathan kicked himself for not thinking of it five minutes ago. "Yeah, I think so."

"Why don't you give her a call, she's Boston PD, she's used to getting calls at weird hours of the morning. See if she wants to come up this weekend."

Duke made a face at him. "You're managing me again."

"Damn right I am. Phone number. Notepad. You know the drill."

They spent the next several minutes sitting huddled over the bench, Duke describing, Nathan asking questions and scribbling. The paramedics came, hauled off the body, Nathan kept talking. Duke called their little girl while Nathan gave instructions to the paramedics, left a message on her phone. It got him to stop looking at the pool of blood on the floor of his stateroom, at least. By the time all that was done, both their eyelids were dragging down. Nathan double and triple checked Duke's testimony and made sure the other man had fallen into bed before he headed out.

  


  


  


"It'll have to do." 

Duke's eyebrows did a funny dance as he looked down at the jury-rigged heat pump. Nathan rolled his eyes, then pretend he hadn't when Duke looked up again. "It's just couple days. New one'll be in then." 

No, Duke still didn't look as though he thought this was a good idea. "Adam tell you that, or Dwight?"

"Dwight." 

His husband shook his head, silvering ponytail bobbing with the motion. "All right. But I want it on the record that I object to this whole plan. We were doing fine with the old one..."

"It leaked."

"... we could have patched it again until the new one came in. I'm just saying."

"Uh-huh." Nathan shook his head and headed for the stairs; he'd only stopped over on lunch to let him know the news. And didn't feel like reminding Duke that he'd been the one more noisily complaining about the heat pump failing in the first place. Duke's attitude was to patch things until they were held together with solder and hope, he'd treated the Cape Rouge the same way until he'd finally sold it. Traded up for a better model more suited to a couple of empty-nesters, he said, and Nathan nodded and didn't bring up the real reason. A new boat with smoother edges and fewer jagged places to cut himself on worked better with his Trouble, anyway.

"Just remember to wear your damn slippers, okay?" Duke called after him. "I'm tired of your freaking cold feet..." and there was probably something else that Nathan didn't hear. He waved to show he'd gotten the important part, at least. More important than usual, since he couldn't exactly tell when it was cold, that comment was half teasing and half real worry. Nathan admitted the worry. He'd get back on the teasing later. 

Someone was pointing at the Parker's Revenge when he got up, directing a severely dressed woman with an auburn ponytail towards them. "... there, at least if he's not at the office."

"Yeah, I tried the office," she said, and Nathan tripped over smooth decking, had to check for a second to make sure he hadn't hurt himself while she kept talking. "They said he was out for lunch."

"Then he's on the boat," Craig shrugged. "Hey, Wuornos! Lady from the Staties wants to talk to you."

Two incarnations and twenty seven years to get ready, he'd thought he knew what would happen when she came back to town again. He wasn't prepared for this. Heart hammering against his ribcage, palms sweaty, yes, when he glanced down to check. Dizzy, he felt dizzy. Couldn't think. " _Duke_ ," he yelled, before anything else. Maybe Duke would know what to say, because he sure as hell didn't.

"Duke?" Her eyebrows arched, oh so familiar, painfully familiar and he knew he was losing ground and credibility with her on their first meeting. Because that was the face she made when she started judging someone needed their hand held, even if it was just in small ways. "You're Chief Wuornos?"

"Ah, yeah..." Yes, he was, he'd even gotten used to it, to hearing that and not looking around for his Dad. "And you're..."

"Detective Charlie Jensen. I'm here from Augusta, pursuing a suspect in that elementary school shooting, you may have heard of it? I'm here to coordinate a search. It's short for Charlotte."

Nathan blinked. "What?" Duke came pounding up next to him and got out his 'what' at almost the same time, though it was pretty obvious when he turned around and saw her there. Charlie. He had to remember her name was Charlie now. Had to remember to keep a straight face. Not to twitch if she asked about 'Parker's Revenge.' Not to overwhelm her at first, they'd discussed that, him and Duke. Let her find out about the Troubles for herself. Let her get through a few cases. And then sit her down and explain to her as much as she could handle, answer any questions she had. 

"My name." She thought he was smiling at her being called Charlie. "It's short for Charlotte."

"Oh." 

Duke's fingers had been scrabbling at his for a second or two before he realized, wrapped his hand around Duke's and squeezed. It'd be okay. They'd figure it out, this time. "Hey."

"Hey." Aud-- Charlie raised her hand and waggled her fingers with the same hesitant amusement she'd had when talking to Duke those first few weeks when she'd just come into town last time. Jesus. "So, are we doing this?"

Search. Suspect. Right. Nathan shook his head slightly, mentally apologizing to his Dad for all the nasty things he'd said to him about not just telling Audrey things. Both inside his head at the time and out of it, to his ghost, and that convinced him even more that this wasn't something he could just tell Au-- Charlie, straight off. Give it time. "Yeah, just a second." He made himself let go of Duke's hand. Even though what he wanted to do right now more than anything was freak out. Panic. Grab Duke and drag him below decks and shake him and get yelled at until they figured out how they were going to deal with this. "You okay to deal with the heat pump? Could take a while." And by the head tilt in Charlie's direction, she would assume he meant the case and Duke would know he meant the other thing.

"Yeah..." Duke swallowed, took a breath. No, it wasn't hitting him any less hard. "Yeah, I'll give you a call when it's in."

"'kay. Let me know if you run into any Troubles." Quick hug and a kiss, and he managed not to either look back or stare at her. Audrey would have recognized what he said. Charlie still thought he meant the heat pump. 

He had to remember to shorten his stride, too, as they walked down to her car. Duke was around his height; she was a good foot or so shorter. "Domestic, uh, issues?" she asked as they walked, still looking for an explanation for his weird behavior. Soon, all right, but not yet. 

Nathan shook his head. "Mechanical issues," he half explained, starting to hope Duke would find an excuse to stop by later in the day so he wouldn't be dealing with this alone. It was deja vu, only no cliffside car toppling. "So, tell me about your suspect. What makes you think he came to Haven?" 

"Because he's from Haven," she said, and it started clicking into place. Lester had been from Haven. And Mosley. And now this guy. She'd find out about the Troubles again. He'd get a chance to tell her. This time, unlike Vince, Dave, his father, this time he and Duke would tell her everything they knew. Piece by piece. Maybe it'd help this time. Maybe they'd fix the Troubles for good. 

Maybe she could stick around, this time.


End file.
